I made this design for my own mother for Mothers Day 2026. It’s a privilege to still have someone to celebrate that day - the same cannot be said for Fathers Day in June which I mainly ignore. With these appreciation days, it’s hard to steer away from the commercial and concentrate on just making a nice experience for people.
In our family I have always kept alive the home-made card tradition
since I was old enough to make them.
That is the one thing I always do. Now that I am a mother myself it means rather than solely concentrating on my own mum’s expectations, I am also being ‘celebrated’ by my dependant (notably this year with 3+ cards that were all given to me before the day itself)! I am infinitely blessed. Over the past couple of years I have been enjoying some tarot time; shuffling the 78 cards of the Smith Rider Waite deck, laying out a three card reading occasionally, but more often just pulling out one card. I look at it, take it what meanings I can from the imagery and then I cross reference it in my indispensable tarot guide; this process takes mere moments, but usually brings something to my attention, changes my perspective on the day or helps me make an informed choice.
The Tarot isn’t magic or spooky. I find it relaxing, joyful and expansive.
I once did a big giant reading for my mum and we spent a couple of hours together, picking apart what it meant and we both learned a lot about each other. It was fun for the pair of us and apparently cleared my mum’s mind on a decision she had to make. So this design stems from that root of goodwill and playfulness.
There is no ‘Mother’ tarot card; lots of queens, an empress, a high priestess
and heaps of other women archetypes but no straight up mother.
So I made one up.
I chose The Empress card as a starting point to create this card design just for my mum. With her very varied hobbies including playing bridge, embroidery and tending her allotment, I went for a crown of root vegetables, a wacky playing card inspired robe and an embroidery hoop with her sewing an R and L for her two children’s initials. The plants are hellebores (connected withe her name) and clematis, she’s wearing earrings she lent me for my wedding, and well, it’s basically heaped with little asides and touches just for her. Hopefully she thinks it’s cute. I coloured her version with a little coloured pencil, but there’s something crisper about the black and white.